Re: Fw: Most popular/common dinosaur misconceptions

["T. Michael Keesey" <keesey@gmail.com>]

On 8/21/06, don ohmes <d_ohmes@yahoo.com> wrote:

> In my opinion, "dinosaur" is a goner as a scientific term

Funny that you should say that on the DINOSAUR Mailing List. Every
scientist here who does not habitually use the term "dinosaur" in a
scientific sense, please raise your hand. (Or whatever the listserve
equivalent is.)

Rumors of  "dinosaur"'s death are greatly exaggerated.

> I am sure however, that you can keep _Dinosauria_

"Dinosaur" is just the English vernacular form of _Dinosauria_. In
scientific discourse, they are tied together; you can't just unbind
them, any more than you can say that "vertebrate" means one thing, but
_Vertebrata_ means something else.

> It is (IMO) _not_ scientifically useful, in no small part because it was undefined yet popular for a long time.

Insecta is *still* not rigorously defined. (Or if it is, it was recent
enough that I haven't heard about it.) Does that make it unscientific?
Should I start calling spiders, scorpions, and centipedes "insects"?
--
T. Michael Keesey
The Dinosauricon: http://dino.lm.com
Parry & Carney: http://parryandcarney.com